Objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of forward collision warning (FCW) and autonomous emergency braking (AEB) in reducing front-to-rear crashes and injuries. Poisson regression was used to compare rates of police-reported crash involvements per insured vehicle year in 27 U.S. states during 2010-2014 between passenger vehicle models with FCW alone or with AEB and the same models where the optional systems were not purchased, controlling for other collision avoidance systems on the vehicle and other factors affecting crash risk. Results showed that FCW alone and FCW with AEB reduced rear-end striking crash involvement rates by 23% and 39%, respectively. FCW with AEB reduced rates of rear-end striking crash involvements with injuries by 42% and rates of rear-end striking crash involvements with third-party injuries by 44%, but reductions with FCW alone were not statistically significant (6% and 4%, respectively). Additionally, FCW alone and with AEB reduced involvement rates in all crashes by 12% and 6%, respectively; multi-vehicle crashes by 11% and 5%, respectively; injury crashes by 15% and 2%, respectively; and third-party injury crashes by 6% and 9%, respectively. Of these, only reductions in all, multi-vehicle, and injury crashes for FCW alone were significant. The study concludes that FCW alone and FCW with AEB are effective in reducing rear-end crashes, and FCW with AEB is effective in reducing rear-end injury crashes, based on the crash experiences of drivers who have purchased the optional technologies. It was surprising that reductions in rear-end injury crash rates for FCW alone were small and non-significant given that the system reduced injury crash rates significantly across all crash types. Approximately 700,000 U.S. police-reported rear-end crashes in 2013 and 300,000 injuries in such crashes could have been prevented if all vehicles were equipped with FCW with AEB that performs similarly as it did for study vehicles. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting